1. Technical Field
The present invention relates in general to health management and in particular to a method, system, and program for monitoring public health. Still more particularly, the present invention relates to a method, system, and program for monitoring public health in order to determine factors affecting public health.
2. Description of the Related Art
Many organizations, such as the Federal Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the Environmental Protection Administration (EPA), and others thrive from sampling the health of control groups within the population. These organizations seek to monitor the health effects that food, medications and pollution of the environment have on human life.
In addition, many other businesses are interested in sampling the health of the population including, but not limited to employers, healthcare insurance providers, life insurance providers, medication developers, and others. There is an interest in projecting the future health of employees and those insured in order to determine costs of insurance and other health related services. In addition, there is an interest in monitoring the effects of experimental medications within a control group.
However, in monitoring the health of a control group, these businesses and organizations are often only able to monitor a few parameters affecting the health of individuals with the control group. For example, an employer may be able to randomly sample the use of illegal drugs among employees. In another example, the FDA may be able to compile food and medication related data from complaints received.
As the tide is turning towards a paperless world, computers are becoming more prevalent in order to replace many functions previously performed utilizing paper and people. In particular, computing devices, such as personal digital assistants, laptop computers and cellular/digital telephones are becoming more commonplace as a personal, portable computer system enabled to track personal data about a user. In addition, personal storage devices that include limited processing power, such as smart cards, are becoming more prevalent as an easily transportable and secure way to transfer data. Moreover, the advent of the network, and particular the Internet, makes it possible for a user to access data stored at a particular location in the network from any other computer system with access to that network.
However, personal computers, smart cards and network systems have not yet been implemented in an efficient way as a personal health monitoring assistant to monitor multiple diverse parameters representative of the comprehensive health of a user, where the comprehensive health of a user includes how a user spends time, spends money, eats, sleeps, what environments the user is exposed to, what and how the user exercises, and other parameters that are indicative of the wellness of a user. It would be advantageous to provide a system for monitoring these personal health monitoring assistants to audit the health of the public and determine factors affecting public health, such that government agencies, employers, insurers and others may more accurately monitor the current state of public health and predict a future state.
In view of the foregoing, it is therefore an object of the present invention to provide improved health management.
It is another object of the present invention to provide an improved method, system, and program for monitoring public health.
It is yet another object of the present invention to provide an improved method, system, and program for monitoring public health in order to determine factors affecting public health.
In accordance with the present invention, multiple health profiles from multiple personal health monitoring systems are compiled. The multiple personal health monitoring systems each monitor a current health profile including physical parameters and environmental parameters indicative of the current health of one of multiple users. The physical parameters and environmental parameters of each of the multiple health profiles to determine health affecting factors for the multiple users, such that health affecting factors of public health are audited.
All objects, features, and advantages of the present invention will become apparent in the following detailed written description.